Petronillus

This has been a useful and enlightening thread. Y'all have just persuaded me that it's worth the extra effort to dress and take the time for the MDR. Some excellent tips here. I now know to be on the lookout for "fresh" and to order my fish cooked medium.

My favorite line from Braveheart: "What a beautiful Scottish evening! The rain's comin' straight doon."

The fjords of Norway are one of our top favorite itineraries. We were in an ordinary verandah cabin and had umbrellas in one of the closets. DW & I always carried a sturdy but collapsible umbrella in our schlepp bags. If your statement is missing umbrellas, just ask your strewards. Assuming past is prolog, on your first shorex you will be told that for Norwegians there is no bad weather; there is only bad clothing. And expect that this aphorism will be recited over and over again.

Having read this entire thread, I think this post is the most insightful. I have had occasion to sit in the Lido Market with crew members whose job is to run Club Hal for the children and teenage pax. They all had excellent backgrounds and personalities to match. While nobody complained, it was obvious that they were much happier and energized when they had a lot of kids in their charge. If you're seriously considering HAL, I second the suggestion that you discuss your plans with a booking agent responsible for groups. If the number of teens is significant, it would surprise me if HAL didn't arrange for the best crew members to staff the youth activities. How could you have a better endorsement than erdufylla's mopey 14yo nephew?

I echo the view that for me the thermal spa is for cooler-weather cruises. I enjoyed the warm-water-heated ceramic loungers frequently (and immensely) on an Alaska cruise but hardly at all on the Mexico cruise that followed. If, for instance, I suffered from arthritis, I'd appreciate it for its therapeutic utility but as it is it's a guilt-free form of self-pampering.

On our most recent cruise on the Westerdam, we saw dancing in the evening at the BB Kings lounge. I'm not an aficionado of that style of music and can't tell rock from blues, but it was not ballroom dancing of any sort. The basic swing patterns would likely serve, but don't expect foxtrot or waltz.

I enjoyed them too. They were invariably a gracious bunch of young people who played at a craftsmanlike level. But, honestly, they were nowhere near the caliber of the Lincoln Center Stage artists. Now that LCS are no more, would I be happy to hear the Adagio Strings again? Not deliriously so, but happy enough.

I'm glad to hear positive reviews of the new format purportedly replacing Lincoln Center Stage, but I will remain skeptical until I get to experience it for myself. A 3-piece combo playing classical music (or, more often, transcriptions of pieces originally composed for a larger group) is commonly referred to as a chamber music ensemble. There is reason chamber music is performed in smaller settings and not in symphony halls. The World Stage, at least on the Signature- and Pinnacle-class ships, is akin to a symphony hall. It's a matter of scale. The saddest thing, in my estimation, is that HAL made a sizable investment in building out and dedicating a space to share between BB King's and LCS, which it took great pains to design for optimal acoustics, and even equipped with a Steinway grand piano, and then abandoned. As a passenger I'm disappointed. As a shareholder I'm appalled.

From your lips to God's ear.

Assigning seats seems like the sensible way to avoid the chair hog problem.

Our excellent Rotterdam cruise to Norway last summer included a stop at Lerwick. I don't remember the precise arrangement, just that we queued up in two lines in the World Stage, at each line a delightfully affable UK border control agent checked our passports and sent us on our way, and at the end a colored sticker was affixed to the outside of the passport. Not a big deal. Not much of an inconvenience. As I think back on it, the personalities of the border agents may have made a difference. By the way, based on our how the character Jimmie Perez on "Shetland" on BritBox talked, I expected that Lerwick would be pronounced "LAIR-ick." Our guide definitely said "LER-wick." When asked she said that the actor portraying Jimmie Perez is from the west of Scotland and has an accent to match. It was also pointed out to us that the cultural affinity of the Shetlands is closer to Scandinavia than to Scotland. The Shetlands have their own flag, which uses the blue and white of the Scottish saltire (St. Andrew's cross) but reverses the colors (blue on white instead of white on blue) and sets the arms of the cross at right angles -- just like the flags of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland.

That being the case, does one experience something comparable to the poolside chair hogs? Do couples split up so as to each claim a window seat and thereby block another DW & DH from sitting together?

Best wishes for your 2025 6-week cruise. I am green with envy. We recently experienced a Tamarind pop-up on the Westerdam. It was in the Canaletto space and was not equipped with the full range of Tamarind offerings (no sushi) or level of service (no saki vessels). It was more like Tamarind Lite.

I think OP was hoping that in a joint billed as "fine dining," his/her comfort food would be raised to a new level. Getting the same old same old was a letdown. I get it.

I tried it once. My impression (no doubt representing a small minority): the presentation was weird, and the taste was disgusting. Perhaps it just wasn't optimally "candied & crispy."